Book excerpt: The Kroller-Muller Museum is one of the great art collections in Europe, yet it remains unknown to many Americans because of its remote location in the Hoge Veluwe National Park in rural southeast Netherlands. This beautifully illustrated book features highlights from the Museum's collection of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century art, including more than a score of works by Vincent van Gogh. The Museum is the result of the passion of a singular collector: Helene Kroller-Muller (1869-1939). The wife of a Dutch shipping magnate, she used almost unlimited funds to amass an astounding collection in a short period of time. Beginning in the 1910s, she collected voraciously -- not only Van Gogh but Neo-Impressionist masters Seurat, Signac, and Denis, and Symbolists Redon and Toorop. She patronized and supported artists who were pioneering abstraction -- particularly Mondrian, Van Doesburg, and Van der Leck -- and collected the Cubists, including Picasso, Gris, and Leger. Mrs. Kroller-Muller had a consuming desire to create a museum where her collection could be displayed for the public. Over a period of more than twenty-five years, she worked with some of the leading architects of the early twentieth century -- H. P. Berlage, Mies van der Rohe, and Henry van de Velde -- and finally in 1938 her dream was realized with the opening of the institution that bears her name. Book jacket.